Catholic Church ‘caricatured’ as anti-gay, Dolan says

A top Roman Catholic cardinal says he regrets that the church is portrayed as “anti-gay.”

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, archbishop of New York, told NBC News that the church has been “out-marketed” on the issue by an array of people, including politicians.

“We’ve been caricatured as being anti-gay,” Dolan said in an interview airing Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “And as much as we’d say, ‘Wait a minute, we’re pro-marriage, we’re pro-traditional marriage, we’re not anti-anybody,’ I don’t know.

“When you have forces like Hollywood, when you have forces like politicians, when you have forces like some opinion-molders that are behind it, it’s a tough battle,” he said.

Illinois recently became the 16th state to legalize same-sex marriage, with the new state law set to take effect June 1.

Comments by Pope Francis apparently had an effect on Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan and other legislators when the state House of Representatives voted earlier this month to pass legislation allowing gay marriage, according to the Chicago Tribune.

“If a person is gay and seeks God and has goodwill, who am I to judge him?” Pope Francis said in July.

Dolan earlier this year called for Catholics to be more conciliatory toward gays and lesbians who may feel left behind by the church’s opposition to homosexuality and same-sex marriage.

The legal battle over same-sex marriage has moved to states, after the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a tenet of the federal Defense of Marriage Act.